Winter is gearing up.

"Long ago in the north

Lies the road of emergence!

Yonder our ancestors live,

Yonder we take our being.

Yet now we come southwards

For cloud flowers blossom here

Here the lightning flashes,

Rain water here is falling!"

—Tewa song

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopi-Tewa

They lived in the desert SW, an area that has seen rain fall a 1000 years ago, and then wither to nothing.

I reference the much famed Chaco Canyon here.

Water is the shaping geologic force, not just here, but over the whole planet.

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Dark clouds blanket Bay Area but fail to drop rain due to phenomenon called 'virga'

http://www.sfgate.com/weather/article/Virga-San-Francisco-Bay-Area-rain-weather-forecast-12342122.php

Here's a shot i took in Nevada 9 years ago of virga - it's to the left of center, kind of like a lock of hair.

It falls from the cloud, never reaches the ground.

Of course there's always some nice cirrus, no matter the month.

And there's always something atmospheric struggling 

to get over a 2400+ ft mountain to my west, be it fog:

Or a full fledged storm system:

Impending is a nice description of some skies:

The first wave of the 'pineapple express' blew in last week. My, my, my!!

What a blast! "Jumpin jack flash, it's a gas, gas, gas".

This is the series of storms that hit the west coast last week,
sort of like a boxer landing a series of punches:

Yosemite is always beautiful, even if the view makes you chilly.

(Not my image below)

Needles to say, skiers are thrilled.

I am a transplant from the east coast and am quite glad to live in Ca.

where snow is optional - if you want some you can always go to the mountains.

Or live by the coast where a good raincoat is a necessity, but a snow shovel?

You'd never need it.

Stop back in next month, winter is just getting started, 

i got plenty of space on my camera chip a-waiting!

Winter storms, Part 2

Here's the rest of my March- April- May images, 

everything from feathery cirrus to snarling anger

Summer is here if i can look westward from my fifth floor breezeway, and see a blanket of fog thick enough to slide over the peak of Mt Tamalpais (2400 ft/elev. +/-) only a few miles from the ocean.

And windy? OMG, as fog burns off the warmer air rushes inland.

No mo' rain 'til October - next post? Probably foggy - the images, i mean - 

not the text, that will be coherent.

To write 'It's been a wild month!' would be an understatement!

The shot above reminds me of fireflies i enjoyed back east:

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Recording-breaking-rain-hits-Bay-Area-in-2017-10921429.php

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/California-drought-monitor-map-11-percent-severe-10920707.php

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Battered-California-roads-will-cost-600-million-10957270.php

http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Bridge-failure-severs-Big-Sur-s-ties-to-outside-10958200.php?t=bd9cc672e3

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Photos-show-the-insane-amounts-of-snow-piled-up-10950893.php

http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Flood-puts-historic-graveyard-in-eerie-10958582.php?t=0381a95f1d

http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/A-fallen-redwood-can-be-a-good-thing-10973461.php

There were many interesting skies to behold! Pictures are worth many, many words, especially mine, so let's get right to it.

I love to see the sky kissing the earth, gently.

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3/4 Sat

A quiet and rather sunny week, but forecast calls for 'scattered showers' over the weekend.

The daylight hours were what i have dubbed 'rainbow skies' - that is to say broken cloud cover, some sunlight, some rain, producing numerous partial and fast moving rainbows. I am happy to note that i will last longer than these, and am around and sentient enough to appreciate them.

I guess i must be constantly under 'scattered', because at 9 PM it's raining sideways - lightly so, but still 'sideways'.

The next AM there are signs it ain't over yet. I'll call this a mini-mammatus:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammatus_cloud
(lots of great images here!)

"Mammatus are most often associated with the anvil cloud and also severe thunderstorms. They often extend from the base of a cumulonimbus, but may also be found under altocumulus, altostratus, stratocumulus, and cirrus clouds, as well as volcanic ash clouds.  In the United States, sky gazers may be most familiar with the very distinct and more common cumulonimbus mammatus. When occurring in cumulonimbus, mammatus are often indicative of a particularly strong storm or maybe even a tornadic storm".

The shot above was taken around 9AM.
By 10:30, there was hail!

I hope the rest of March is just as interesting as February was!
My Canon Powershot camera is always within quick reach!

Winter finally arrived - Friday 10/14

But first let's back up a bit to take in a few nice things since the last post (July 30)

It's been a couple of pretty dull months skies-wise. Even the NWS forecast calls it a broken record.

A few troughs of varying high and low pressure have moved thru from time to time, but they don't break the almost constant monotony of a clear blue sky from horizon to horizon much.

A few weak systems have blown thru, and serving up a bit of nice cirrus. I've been naming them sometimes, w/ adverbs or adjectives ... like 'dancing'... frothy...

This is dancing

I'm not sure what the rest are called

How 'bout a few mo' from another day?

Here's the take from weekend when winter finally rolled in, on again and off again rain. The first wave friday was the worst for sure.

10/14

I was glad i decided to take friday off from work. In the early AM it rained like a mad *MF*, and windy too. Really windy. I could look out my apt window to see an old oak tree half block away being twisted turned & wrenched down to it's roots. It all lasted for a few hours, and then some calm.

My commute, if i had done it, would have been hellacious. At 8:25 a produce truck overturned just north of me, stopped traffic on the freeway for 2 full hours. I always have at least one if not two magazines in my travel-bag... but really, these would be gone long before the traffic snarl was.

10/15

9 AM? some breaks in the clouds, by noon, all grey, moving very fast, but no rain. 

4 PM  more grey, no rain.

Bummer - i look ( or maybe i should say 'listen'?) for the soft, sizzling sound of traffic below me.

6:15

I can see out my northern facing window out of the corner of my eye. Being a longtime photographer, i can see the color of the light in a heart beat, and now the light on everything to the north is a  red-orange warmth. I walk to the top level breezeway in just my undies and T-shirt to take in... ( uh - i wasn't the only one!)

Very nice. I am happy to 'be here, now'.

10/16 sunday

No rain to speak of in my neck o' the woods, but plenty of frothy aerial displays.

I am sure the aerial cinema display will continue - I'll be back, for sure.

Mother nature always puts on a great slow motion cinema display :-)

Summer Fog! ..and one stunning sunset...

6/21 - There was one stunning sunset in SF:

http://www.sfgate.com/living/article/Bay-Area-Instagrammers-lose-their-minds-over-8314424.php

..... not so stunning just a few miles north, where i am.

I am looking for something truly different, like this:

Here's one excellent link:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/chasing-stormy-skies-161030547/photo-chasing-the-stormy-skies-1467130347435.html

Here's some nice cirrus, 6/16:

(A little something to break up the monotony of totally blue skies.)

Sat. 7/9 - By 1PM,  low clouds/fog starts advancing inland - a cool breeze blows in my window.

Love that natural air conditioning! This continues thru the month, it is a bit of a mild rollercoaster - the 7 day forecast looks like this:

Sunday 7/24

Wasn't expecting any good fog, just wanted to cool off a bit from San Rafael's 85º afternoons.

Satellite image showed some fog, but offshore, not thru the Gate, or on onto the land. The Nat'l weather service text display product said the marine layer was shallow, about 1000 ft., which is ideal for photos at MH.

The NWS was right, the sat. image was wrong! - by the time i got there (an hour later, fog doesn't usually move that fast), it was doing my favorite thing, pouring thru the gate but burning off by alcatraz & struggling to get over the coastal hills (only 1000 ft high), burning off in marvelous mystical wispy strands.

The bus schedules had changed recently, but i was in luck, got one to the GGB as soon as i arrived at the transit center, and the one back to MH as soon as i got to the GGB.

Fog seems to have this pattern about it here - it burns off/backs off for a while in the AM, then early PM sometime it starts moving back in, and can overwhelm the headlands w/ pea soup, very cold. That's what it did today, with a vengeance. I waited for the bus at the last stop east before going over the bridge, and it was all i could do to stand up it was so windy. And the wait for the bus back to Marin county was loooong, traffic across the bridge was moving at a snail's pace. 

But the pix were worth it.

'Ah'll be back' as the terminator said most famously.